Portrait of Leonard J. Arrington

Church Historian, 1972–1982

Leonard J. Arrington

1917–1999

1 topic · 3 dated events

intimidated
The September Six
Wikipedia Image: CC BY-SA 3.0 — Susan Arrington Madsen

Their part in each topic

The September Six

Church Historian, 1972–1982

The first professionally trained historian to hold the office, Arrington opened the Church archives, hired a staff and launched a sixteen-volume history. His decade was later nicknamed 'Camelot.' The projects were curtailed, his title was changed in 1978, his division was moved to Brigham Young University, and he was released in January 1982 without public announcement. Everything that followed in this story runs through the rise and collapse of his History Division.

Timeline · Key players · Key sources · Why it matters

In the timeline

3 events across 1 topics, chronological. Only events this person was actually part of — present at, responsible for, or the subject of — not every event where the name comes up.

January 1972
The September Six

Leonard Arrington is appointed Church Historianhinge

Arrington became the first professionally trained historian to hold the office since the 1840s, appointed under the direction of apostle Howard W. Hunter. The Church Historian's Office was reorganised as the Historical Department, with Arrington heading a new History Division. He hired a staff of young professional historians, opened the archives to them, and launched a sixteen-volume sesquicentennial history.

Why this is a hingeIt is the moment the institution deliberately handed its own past to professional historians — the experiment whose failure everything after 1982 refers back to.
People: Leonard J. Arrington
Sources: Ten Years in Camelot: A Personal Memoir · Chosen Path: A Memoir · The Mormon Purge
1980–1982
The September Six

The History Division is moved to Brigham Young University

The sixteen-volume history was cancelled. Arrington and a core of historians were administratively transferred to BYU as the newly created Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History; by 1982 the physical move was complete. Access to the Church archives was restricted at the same time, and steps were taken to control publication of research already done there.

Disputed Church president Spencer W. Kimball framed the move as enhancing the historians' stature and effectiveness; Bitton and Arrington described it as the scuttling of the division.
People: Leonard J. Arrington
Sources: Ten Years in Camelot: A Personal Memoir · Chosen Path: A Memoir · The Mormon Purge
25 January 1982
The September Six

Arrington is released; there is no announcementhinge

Arrington received a letter from the First Presidency extending an 'honorable release' from his ecclesiastical and bureaucratic positions. G. Homer Durham was set apart as Church Historian in a private session on 8 February. Neither the release nor the new calling was mentioned in general conference or the Church News, and no portrait of Arrington was hung in the historians' gallery.

Why this is a hingeCamelot ended not in a controversy but in a silence, and the silence became the scholars' standing example of how the institution handles what it would rather not have said.
People: Leonard J. Arrington
Sources: The Mormon Purge · Ten Years in Camelot: A Personal Memoir

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